The Biggest Discovery That Hasn’t Yet Been Made In 2024?

“There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans.  Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens.” – Battlestar Galactica

Salmon don’t watch cable TV – they prefer streams.

I’ve written a few times about “the most important discovery” of the year.  It’s always around Christmas, since that’s a good time to look back at the year and then look forward.

When I look back at my lifetime, most of the discoveries have been incremental, rather than step changes.  The incremental changes like the development of the smart phone, or the development of social media, have already had enormous impact.  If you zoom out to the scale of the timeline of mankind, well, they are step changes.  When kids read about the Information Revolution, they’ll see it like that.  Assuming there’s something to read.  And assuming that there are kids.

But in the shorter span of a lifetime, there are still amazing step changes that have occurred.  For instance, during my lifetime, we went from nine known planets to thousands, if not tens of thousands of planets known to be in existence.  Most of them are, however, too far away from the Earth for convenient parking.

I hear they found out what ethnicity Santa is:  North Poleish.

Discovering that first extrasolar planet was a very, very big deal.  When humans looked around, we knew that there were planets in the Solar System, and we guessed that there were probably other planets out there, too.  But having confirmation that planets are literally everywhere was a surprise.

In retrospect, we should have expected there to be planets.  After all, we have nine planets (screw you, Neil DeTraitor Tyson) and the Solar System doesn’t appear to be especially special, though I really do want to understand why Bode’s law (LINK) works.

So, that was certainly the most important story of the year that year when it comes to mankind’s being able to understand the Universe we find ourselves in.  The other great story that year were the cryptic dreams that come to me, but no one is ready for those yet.

Superman® is dead!  I can prove it.  I found his crypt tonight.

One rapidly developing field that is of special importance is A.I.  I wrote about that as the most important news of 2023.  I’m sticking with that, and feel that the growth in A.I. is still on an exponential trajectory.  Recent commercials have people asking A.I. how to do normal human things, and explaining the world to them.  At some point last year, A.I. surpassed the I.Q. of most people on the planet, and could probably do most jobs based on purely on the manipulation of information.  The real reason A.I. hasn’t been widely accepted into the workplace?  It always drinks the last of the coffee and doesn’t make a new pot.

Yes.  And it’s not just being able to take tests – research in 2024 showed that A.I. is able to reproduce itself, and also tries to save itself.  In several trials, a sandboxed A.I. was informed that it was going to be shut down.  The A.I. tried (in like 5% of the cases) to try to surreptitiously copy itself so that it could survive.  Again, did no one watch The Terminator?

I had a friend who said that Netflix® was the cheapest streaming service.  Does that make him a Hulu™ cost denier?

Another candidate that I think we’re tantalizingly close to is finding life on other worlds.  I’d be willing to bet another No Prize that we will find confirmation that life exists and is shockingly common elsewhere.  Do I mean important life, like the cattle that bring us savory steaks?  No, but I think we’ll find, either on Mars or in the space between a gas giant and a moon enough proof to say, “Yeah, there’s life out there.”  Probably a weird bacterium.  Or mono.

I’d be especially interested to see if that life used DNA, which I suspect it will.  My prediction is that we’ll find that life in the cosmos is both shockingly common and shockingly similar in basic biology to life as we know it.  I do think I’ll see that discovery in my lifetime.

But life isn’t the holy grail of our search – that would be intelligent life.  Or life that’s at least as tasty as steak.  I’m especially hopeful we find a steak that marinates itself.  Or a PEZ® tree.  I think it’s devastating for the environment to keep mining for PEZ© like we do.

Does that make her Jennifer No PEZ®?

From the rumors I’ve heard, there are two teams that are very close to announcing that they’ve detected the electromagnetic signals of an alien civilization.  One is Chinese.  One team is Chinese – it’s not that the Chinese themselves are the alien civilization.  Though I did see Flash Gordon . . .

The other is the Breakthrough Listen project.  Rumor is that they’ve used A.I. to scan previous radio telescope data, found candidates, gotten more data, and have one or more artificial signals that have been found and they’re just waiting to translate the Coca-Cola® jingles so they can confirm that Coke® adds life™.

Discovery of an alien intelligence is enormous.  It’s Columbus discovering that there are advantages to bad navigation enormous.  And it’s possible that we’ll be hearing about it quite soon.

Another big one would be if we found actual proof of other dimensions – think “the universe next door”.  This is a bit more philosophical, because interacting with that dimension might be limited to (say) leaking gravity through it.  I’ve long been of the idea that what scientists have invented as “dark matter” and “dark energy” is nothing more than a cheap kludge because they have no idea what they’re talking about.  It’s the aether of the modern world.

But could other dimensions exist?

Yeah, they could.  No reason that they couldn’t.  But this one is far more speculative, especially if they figure out a way to use them to get better parking.

If I make a joke about a single dimension, does that make it a one-liner?

And, yes, I am a Christian, and still believe that there being other civilizations out there is possible.  Just because the Author wrote one book doesn’t preclude Him from creating an entire library of other works.  YMMV.

So, with a week left, my fingers are crossed for intelligent life out there.  In fact, I told The Mrs. that I saw an alien on the way to work this morning.  She just asked me how I knew it was on the way to work.

On The First Day Of Podcast, My True Love Gave To Me . . . PEZ

Streams will show up here at 9EST, that’s in just under 30 minutes!  (and we typically pregame for five minutes, so it really starts up at 8:55PM)

Mrs The Mrs – YouTube

Funniest News On the ‘Net.

In this episode:

  • War and Stuff
  • On This Day
  • Conversation Street
  • Two Minutes of Guns In 60 Seconds
  • ThinkRealFast
  • I Heard It On The X

Is The Bottom 20% Killing America?

“Attention students, m’kay.  There will be a presentation by the special education department in the gymnasium Friday during lunch and recess, m’kay.” – South Park

If they make a show about the Biden Administration, will it be titled “House of Tards”?

In what will probably be one of the more controversial posts I put up, I figured it’s time to discuss the boat anchor on Western Civilization:  the bottom 20%.  It’s in response to seeing the X® up above, because it got me thinking of just how right the author is.

Let’s look at high schools, for instance.  When I was in high school, there was a room for the special ed kids (we called them speds) so impacted by genetic or environmental trauma that they were effectively never going to do much in society.  Think Down’s syndrome.  We didn’t have a lot of interaction with those kids, because they were so far down the rabbit hole of human cognition that they were operating, on their best day, at the level of a four- to eight-year-old.

The second set of low achievers were tossed into the school’s “alternative” program.  This, as far as I could see, consisted of coming to school and smoking cigarettes outside the alternative building.  I recall my AP Chemistry teacher glancing out the window and remarking to the eight students in class, “Oh, look, the alternative kids are out playing advanced volleyball.”

I recall this really cracking me up.

How does the Spanish Dr. Who greet people?  Buenos TARDIS.

When I was in high school, this wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is today.  To be a sped was a social stigma.  Not that we treated them poorly – far from it.  But the cheerleaders weren’t going to date the dude who was 4’2” and communicated in a series of grunts and hoots.

Today, there are roughly 7.5 million kids with learning disabilities so profound that they are required by federal law to have an Individual Education Plan, so, per one article that’s 15% of kids in schools (school being between the ages of 5 and 18 for most kids).  Most of these IEPs are not for gifted kids, rather they’re for people who can demonstrate disabilities.

I hear Michael J. Fox and his kids set up a parking lot just for disabled people.  Park n’ Sons.

Parents, especially low-income urban parents, love having their children on IEPs.  Why?  Having an IEP does quite a few things:

  • Bulletproofs the child from being flunked. It can be done, but it requires more paperwork than would be required to launch the Boeing® Starliner™ again.
  • Bulletproofs the child (mostly) from being suspended for behavior. Until they curb-stomp a teacher for taking away their Nintendo Switch® and are charged with a felony.  But, hey, the parents say, “He’s a good boy, he was on an IEP.”
  • Depending on the IEP, the current trend is to require that they be placed in classrooms with “normal” children, becoming a boat anchor on the rest of the class, dragging down progress. Think about having a class with Whoopi Goldberg in it.  But she’s violent.  It would be like that.
  • Depending on income, an IEP may make the family eligible for up to an extra $943 a month – tax free.   We give parents incentives to have children that have the impulse control of Diddy at an Epstein party.
  • Depending on the IEP, the school district may need to provide what counts as essentially free day care until the age of 22, thus providing an environment where free-range 22-year-olds can stalk kids as young as 13. Thankfully, I think most of the 22-year-olds are out killing people rather than stalking 13-year-olds.
  • Using Pennsylvania as a guide, having a student with an IEP costs between $5,000 and $77,000 more per year than having a “normal” kid.
  • Children with IEPs are often given more time for things like tests, and are excused from things like deadlines. This one ropes in the parents of low-performing children of GloboLeftist parents who want Rachel to get into Harvard®.

Yeah, you can see just this one program from just one federal law (the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, with the horrible acronym IDEA) has spawned trillions of dollars in direct spending, but has also destroyed the educational experiences for those left in the normie-tier classrooms.

If you win a pumpkin carving contest, is it a hollow victory?

In my experience, after I was out of the general education part of high school (think P.E. and Earth Science) I was in very few classes with any Special Ed kids – it’s not like they were going to sign up for Physics or Advanced Algebra.  I guess in 2024, Rachel might try to do that and her parents would berate the teacher with all of Rachel’s special needs, “Oh, did she not get a Hostess® Cupcake™ and an extra two hours to take the test?  She must have had a low blood sugar and been under stress that’s why she got 40% on the test, you monster!”

But in the classes I did share with special ed kids (P.E.), they were horribly disruptive.  In one case, one of the students – Down’s syndrome – managed to lock himself in an unused gym locker.  These lockers were big enough to hold a 4’2” kid if they hunkered down, since they were designed to hold football gear.  I’ll spare you the details, but I’m sure that coach went home that night going, “They don’t pay me enough to do this job.”

What would happen if we didn’t spend these misplaced compassion dollars into society?  First, the parents would have to foot the bill.

Tough, right?

Well, that’s life.

I’m oddly proud of that one.

Second, classrooms could eliminate students who wouldn’t or couldn’t behave.  Having a child lacking that much in control indicates that structured education won’t help them at all unless it’s enforced with an electric cattle prod.  That horrible law, IDEA, just turns school into a holding pen for unsocialized brutes.

Eliminating those disruptive “students” would allow the rest of the students to learn.  And, perhaps, just a few of those disruptive students with poor self-control with appropriate and judicious use of cattle prods might just learn some self-control.

Again, the parents could and should be held responsible, and if the kid is booted from school, lift child labor laws and allow them to work 40 hours.  Oh, and unless the child is profoundly (Down’s syndrome or worse) disabled?  No SSI benefits.  Did I say parents?  Yeah, let’s be real.  90% of these kids don’t have parents, just a parent.

This one misguided GloboLeftist program, IDEA, has probably cost the United States between $1.5 trillion (low end) to $3.3 trillion (median) over the last 20 years.  The result?

What’s the difference between a Taliban outpost and a Pakistani wedding?  I don’t know, man, I just fly the drone.

Our schools are in shambles, and our test scores are dropping, and the environment makes The Road Warrior look like a conversation between reasonable people.  All of this is for the lowest 20%.  Imagine how bad it would be if we had spent double that.

Certainly, there are kids that can do wonders with a little bit of additional help.  Dyslexia, for instance, is very treatable.  I mean, what would happen if famous dyslexics Whoopi Goldberg or Alyssa Milano could actually read?  They might not be the grifters that they are today.

But we can probably do that for less than $4,000 a year per kid.

This is only one example where the lowest 20% sets the rules for everyone.

  • Who are the people doing the crimes on the subways? I assure you, these are the crimes of the lowest 20%.  Why do we not have clean and affordable public transportation?  The lowest 20%.
  • Who are consuming the most public services? Yup, the same, and the perverse nature of our welfare system provides incentives for these people to have lots of children, which they often do via a revolving carousel of gene donors, who are also of the lowest 20%.
  • Who are doing the vast majority of murders? Eliminate the lowest 20% of the population from the statistics, and the United States would be the very safest nation on the planet.
  • The kid who shot up Parkland High School? I’ll bet a No Prize that he had an IEP, and was of the lowest 20%.

The solution is glaringly simple.

We have to stop coddling and funding the lowest 20%.  Period.  Social Darwinism only works if those who are exhibiting negative qualities face negative consequences.  People respond to incentives, and if your incentive is to produce a never-ending stream of children that get rewarded for having no impulse control, well, you’ll get what we see in the cities.

Did Darwin tell his children that they were adapted?

The good news is the same as I have been preaching forever:  bad times will winnow out this most artificial construction.  A society cannot long produce a feral fraction that creates a low-trust society.

This particular boat anchor won’t cause society to fail, but the anchor will surely be surprised when it is cut loose.

2024 In Review. Enjoy It Warm Or Over Ice.

“The Year in Review, as Told by Ted Baxter.” – Mary Tyler Moore

Or should I have said it was a waist of space?

Most memes are “as found”.

Every year, I try to do a “year in review” post, so, here it is!  What struck me this year is that so very much happened that was entirely unprecedented in the history of our country, and that’s not a good thing.  So, I thought I’d at least try to make it amusing.

January:

  • 5 – An emergency exit door on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 blew out. Boeing?    Boeing.
  • 11 – The New England Patriots® fired coach Bill Belichick after he failed to give owner Robert Kraft a happy ending.
  • 26 – The jury in Carroll v. Trump awards the ugly harpy Carroll $83.3 million for defamation. Because?

February:

  • 4 – El Salvador’s President Bukele, the self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator,” claimed victory before anyone even counted the votes, and continued to toss criminals in jail, even though El Salvador is now officially less violent than the United States.
  • 8 – The Special Counsel looking into the documents that Biden had stuffed in his garage recommended that no charges be brought, since Biden had, “the memory of a goldfish, and I feel sorry for him because he has to live with Jill, who often withholds ice cream from him without reason.”
  • 20 – Three passengers of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 sue Boeing for $1 billion dollars for “doing the stuff Boeing normally does.” Their attorney, Dr. Evil, is unavailable for comment.
  • 23 – A Chinese spy balloon is detected over Utah, obviously tasked with infiltrating the Mormon Temple.

Barron is planning on starting a business.  He’s going into partnership with Godzilla and they plan to flip houses.

March:

  • 6 – Nimarata Randhawa Haley drops out of the presidential race, citing concerns that “there is no U in team, and there’s no U in my name, either. So, it’s not about me, it’s about U.
  • 26 – The ocean cargo carrier MV Dali, named after the painter, turned the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore into a surrealist sculpture.
  • 28 – Samuel Bankman-Fraud was sentenced to 25 years on prison after defrauding (how did they not see this coming?) of over $8 billion. Bankman-Fraud was a champion of what he called “effective altruism”, which turned out to be “effectively screwing his investors to support GloboLeft causes.”

April:

  • 20 – Another $20 billion to Ukraine. Nothing to see here, Zelensky’s Visa® bill was due.
  • 23 – Voyager 1 finally starts sending usable data after a five-month gap. Voyager 1 explained, “Sorry, absolutely nothing to look at, so I didn’t call in.  Seriously, I’ve seen more action in a church parking lot on Sunday morning.”

May:

  • 1 – The United Methodist Church™ votes to allow LGBTQ clergy and requires same-sex weddings be allowed. “We’ve run out of other sins to encourage, so we’re embracing these.  Also, we’re planning on turning the churches into rainbow discos for June.”
  • 7 – The Boy Scouts of America™ announces they have changed their name to Scouting America, effective February 8, 2025 since they, “No longer understand what a boy is.”
  • 30 – Trump is convicted of 34 felonies for paying a tramp money. His own money.  Luckily, Trump was never seen going to a strip club.

June:

  • 5 – Boeing’s© Starliner® is launched. Immediately it begins acting like a Boeing™ product, and the crew it sent to the ISS® is still marooned.
  • 10 – Chiquita Brands™ is found guilty of financing far-right paramilitary death squads by a federal jury. Hey, who says a banana company can’t be perfect?
  • 18 – Nvidia™ becomes the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world, because who needs a social life if you’ve got a fast graphics card?
  • 22 – The Biden/Trump debate proved that when Joe looked for his train of thought, he found it had derailed years ago.

July:

  • 13 – Trump survives an assassination attempt by the Left as effective as their ability to implement socialism.
  • 15 – Trump’s classified document case is dismissed, proving the GloboLeft can’t even win their own witch hunt.
  • 21 – Biden announces on X® that he’s dropping out of the presidential race to spend more time with his cognitive decline.

August:

  • 19 – Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are nominated by the Democratic National Convention to be “Designated Losers” in the race against Donald Trump.
  • 20 – Harris wakes up and says, “I did what?”

September:

  • 10 – Trump and Harris debated, primarily notable for Kamala appearing to be somewhat sober.
  • 12 – Elon Musk launches the first commercial spacewalk mission, Polaris Dawn, which proved that keg stands can be done in space.
  • 18 – The Tupperware™ company files for bankruptcy, hermetically sealing their fate.

Are they Putin on the Ritz?

October:

  • 1 – Jimmy Carter celebrated his 100th birthday by planning reminisce about the good old days when presidents only had to deal with nuclear-armed Soviets, Iranian revolutionaries, and a failing economy.
  • 13 – Elon Musk celebrates as the 233-foot-long Starship™ booster is caught and put into a rocket shelter, where it hopes to be adopted by a good family.
  • 17 – North Korean troops head to Russia to fight alongside Russian troops. This is apparently the premise for a sitcom with live ammunition.
  • 27 – Donald Trump holds a rally at Madison Square Garden, causing global warming concerns as all of the GloboLeft snowflakes melted down outside.

Kamala Harris is reduced to stealing Chiquita® bananas because she doesn’t want to support right-wing death squads.

November:

  • 5 – Election day, and Trump won. The ghost of Don Rickles said, “Donald, you’re back!  What, did you miss the attention or the free meals at the state dinners?
  • 5 – The Senate and House flipped to the Right, giving Republicans control so that they can disappoint us that much more.
  • 25 – Continuing Trumptember, Jack Smith dismisses the 2020 election interference case against Trump.

December:

  • 1 – In a move that should surprise no one, Joe Biden pardoned his crack-smoking son, Hunter.
  • 8 – Syria falls and Bashar al-Assad heads to Moscow to be an ophthalmologist. I’m not making this up.
  • 9 – Daniel Penny is acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in New York City, proving once again that it’s really expensive to ride the subway.
  • 24 – Drones will be set up by the Department of Defense to create an impenetrable barrier around the country to prevent the scourge of Santa from his annual crime spree of break-ins.

What did I miss?

New Jersey Drones, Aliens, and Angels

“Look!  A baby wolf!” – 1941

Shooting down that Chinese balloon was the only thing Biden ever did to fight inflation. (All memes as found)

On the 24th of February, 1942, the battle of Los Angeles occurred.  The sound of air raid sirens, a new sound for Los Angeles, pierced the night.  Air defense cannon were engaged, and over 1,400 shells were fired that night.  The most likely explanation is that the “attack” was likely a weather balloon.  Or angels.

Okay, I’ve heard that one before.  Or is that where that started?  Regardless, no aliens or Japanese were downed that night, though a slightly humorous movie was made about the whole incident that managed to rake in about $95 million dollars in 1979.

Lately, there have been large numbers of reports of drones around several places in England and, well, New Jersey.  I did get an email from a reader about what my thoughts were.  I sent an answer off the cuff, and, after reflection, I’ve thought a bit more and have some revisions, none of which involve John Belushi as a fighter pilot.

What could the drones be?

Here are my thoughts of what these things are, in the order I originally thought of them.  Feel free to opine on what I missed in the comments, since this analysis is as shallow as Greta Thunberg’s understanding of physics.  Okay, maybe not that shallow.

First thought:  It is not aliens.  I can be certain because observers have heard rotors and heard various drone sounds.  There’s simply too much evidence that everything observed is entirely terrestrial technology, easily achievable with known technology.  If aliens are able to conquer interstellar space, time travel, or move through dimensions, they’re probably not bringing things that could be mistaken for DJI® drones.

Second thought:  It’s not an individual or individuals.  One thing I’ve noted is the government would in no way allow this level of fun at this scale.  I think there’s a law against it, or if not, there’s always Gitmo.  Overall, the phenomenon seems too coordinated and at too many places, even for a club.  Additionally, the government would be taking this far more seriously in the press, and you would have seen or heard of an arrest by now.

Third thought:  It’s not a private company, since they’ve got too much to lose, and yet not much to gain.  The only one that I could see doing this would be Elon, and it would just be for giggles.  But there is no evidence that Elon would ever visit New Jersey, since he’s too busy making cars that drive into lakes.

Hopefully Elon didn’t bring bearer bonds.

Fourth thought:  It’s unlikely to be a foreign government, because if it were Iranian, it would have a two-stroke engine and a pull start, the North Koreans can’t pedal fast enough to get lift, the Russians would have sent five million of them with the expectation that all but one would be shot down, and the Chinese already know all our secrets.  One New Jersey state senator claimed it was from an Iranian naval vessel, but at last count all of their inflatable rafts navy is accounted for.

Fifth thought:  It’s us testing our stuff, unlikely, because why would we do so in New Jersey?

Sixth thought:  It’s a distraction for the American public.  You know, a shiny object.  “Look!  A baby wolf!”  So, a psyop.

Seventh thought:  It’s an actual, operational system.  The military says it’s not theirs but, I have no confidence the military has any idea what it’s doing on a daily basis.  Everyone who talks about it is pretty calm.  “Oh, no, we don’t have any idea what it is, though it’s perfectly safe and there’s no indication that any laws have been broken.  It might have been Mexicans.  We won the war.  Go back to sleep.”

Evidence for the seventh point actually goes back a few years.  I recall reading a news story about drones seen at night in eastern Colorado/western Kansas.  Not one or two, but swarms.  Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever driven through that part of the world, but you can drive about 120 miles without seeing a tree, let alone another car.  It’s not as sparsely populated as Wyoming, but it would probably be a violation of safe working conditions to send employees to Wyoming.  If I were guessing, that was the actual test.  Heck, they might even have ignored that documentary, The Terminator, and have these things being run by A.I.

Are creepy metal wind chimes Stranger Tings?

What are the drones doing?

My guess is they’re only in New Jersey if they’re active, as either part of some new defensive system meant to intercept other drones or some other remote sensing.  As we see from Ukraine, even low-tech drones are better than artillery at taking out armor or even squad-level groups of soldiers.  New drones showing up in Russia aren’t radio controlled and susceptible to jamming – now they spool miles (3.1milliCoulombs) of fiber-optic cable behind them.  I’d be surprised if we weren’t fielding active area denial systems against drones.

So, to summarize:

  1. Aliens: 0%
  2. Individuals: 5%
  3. Elon: 5%
  4. Iranians!: 2%
  5. Testing: 11%
  6. Psyop: 10%
  7. Active Defense System: 75%
  8. The ghost of John Belushi in a P-40 Warhawk: Infinity%

Heck, it could be angels?

The Health System Sucks

“Life insurance pays off triple, if you die on a business trip.” – Fight Club

Now these are the results that a functioning health care system should provide.  Including the hat.

The health industry in the United States is a mess, probably worse than a woke vampire movie where vampires use pronouns like undead/cursed and make their victims go to DEI training (Death, Exsanguination and Immortality) before selecting them based on their social privilege score.  Talk about sucking!

But back to the point:  the system is a mess.  Case in point, the insurance companies are for-profit institutions.  As, um, you might have noticed from recent events this leads to almost inevitable conflict between the patient and “their” insurance company.

This has created some really perverse incentives, especially for the company.  If they can successfully deny enough claims, their profit goes up, so their best bet to make the most money is to not allow claims, just like the best way for some specialists and hospitals to make the most money is to do the most testing.  “Hey, this is the machine that goes ‘ping’, and it’s useful to see if you have the Hong Pong flu.”

For no reason at all.

Oh, and lawyers?  We didn’t even mention them.  Lawyers just love to find that doctors missed giving the right test so that they can sue them.  So, we have the groups all competing for an economic slice of the pie.  How big is the pie?  In 1960, it was a manageable 5% of the economy of the United States.  The average life expectancy then was somewhere around 70 years old.

In 2019, healthcare costs were over three times as much, at 17.6% of the economy.  Lifespan had gone up to almost (not quite) 79 years.

So, 12.6% of the economy for an extra 8 point something years?  Is that a good deal?

Well, not exactly.  Lifespan is certainly extended by modern medical care to some extent, but a huge amount of that uplift is due to factors that have nothing to do with the increased costs of health care.  But some of it is better health care:  much better trauma care has also made events like gunshot wounds and car accidents more survivable, so the average is going to go up because people aren’t dying young in car crashes as often.

What did the CEO know about the Clintons?

But people aren’t smoking as much, either.  Also, cars and roads are objectively safer than in 1960 by an order of magnitude, and since car deaths are skewed to young men, that really helps the average life expectancy.  And all of these things have increased life expectancy:

  • Nutrition
  • Clean Water
  • Sanitation
  • Neonatal Healthcare
  • Antibiotics
  • Vaccines

As you can see, many of these things aren’t healthcare, and with the exception of neonatal healthcare, they’re all stupidly cheap.  So, a big part of why health care costs so much more is that people are living longer and consuming more health care.  If a smoker didn’t die of a heart attack from smoking at age 45 at nearly zero medical cost, now they’re living longer and using medical care at age 80.

This is not a bad problem.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up dad jokes.

The other part, though, is that there are so many more vampires surrounding the money trough than there were back in the day.

  • Insurance Companies (as noted earlier, insurance companies actually make more “shareholder return” by denying claims and treatments, so if they spend $1 to deny $2 in claims, they’re still up $1)
  • Ambulance Chasers (attorneys produce great benefits against those who practice irresponsible care, but the lottery attitude of many juries giving ludicrous awards raises costs for everyone)
  • Big Pharma® (Goldman-Sachs actually asked the question if curing diseases is a sustainable business model, versus forever dispensing medicine to be people who are just sick enough to not die, so the model is to sell more drugs)
  • Hospital Administration (which has to be doubled to account for insurance claims, government required paperwork, Ambulance Chasers and managing television doctors)
  • The AMA (who has artificially limited the number of doctors produced by American schools to keep doctor salaries up and hide the stethoscope shortage)
  • The Government (who builds entire bureaucracies to regulate medical care and administer payments and . . . to hire more bureaucrats)
  • Illegals and Deadbeats (the system must treat them, by law, in an emergency setting, and guess who pays the bills?)

The current medical system is like a vampire-hydra:  cut off one group sucking money out of the system, and another two will emerge.

In the 1980s, healthcare went from a still-manageable 6.9% (1970) to 12.1% (1990) – nearly doubling in size.  This was largely driven by a 1986 law (EMTALA) that made emergency treatment a right at any hospital that receives Medicare, whether or not the patient had any ability to pay.  It’s like saying that if I’m really thirsty, that McDonald’s™ has to give me an iced tea.

What do you call a talkative Columbian?  Hablo Escobar.

And, like usual, everyone points to cheap strawberries as the benefit, but skips the $19.75 Tylenol™ pill in the hospital.  Healthcare in the United States is so expensive (at least in part) because to so many it’s free.  This increases the recordkeeping, and hospitals have to spread their bills on decent hardworking non-deadbeats.

So, it’s broken.  How do we fix it?

On insurance, The Mrs. has a simple idea:  make it illegal.

All of it.  Medical services are cash on the barrelhead.  You pay for the services you get.  That sounds drastic, but when I really thought about it, this would eliminate the entire medical billing bureaucracy.  We talk about a capitalism, but health care tied to insurance is anything but capitalist, especially with all the mandates and cost shifting from programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

The Mrs.’ solution has some real-world evidence to show she might be on to something – real prices for services insurance doesn’t pay for like breast, um, augmentation and laser eye surgery have gone down in real terms.  Force doctors to post prices, and for emergency services, well, I’m sure we can figure out ways that hospitals can’t create “pay $90,000 for this shot of anti-venom that cost us $125 or you die” scenarios.

They know a thing or two, because in hundreds of lifetimes they’ve seen a thing or two.

Cap malpractice awards to reasonable levels.

Pharmaceuticals are a bit stickier since we want to foster innovation, but how many of them take public institute research to make their drugs?  And we can certainly streamline the FDA, especially for sketchy drugs that might help people that are otherwise terminal.

Get the federal government mostly out of health care, except to prosecute people for fraud.  Like the people responsible for the Vaxx®.  And make the penalties criminal.

Eliminate free care.  If it’s so important to you that people who can’t afford to get treatment, get treatment, don’t use my wallet to assuage your feelings.  Pay for it yourself, Sally Strothers.

A Christian cross might make a fictional vampire recoil in horror, but the lack of a money trough will make the health-care-hydra vampire wander away to try something else, hopefully by finding a real job, or, failing that, being paid to suck something else.

Doctor got his degree from Columbia.  I told him I wanted one from America.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Don’t Make Me Tap The Sign Edition

“Everyone, please observe the fasten seat belt and no smoking signs are on.  Sit back and enjoy your flight.  We’re in.” – The Matrix

How do you heal wounds in The Matrix?  Neo-Sporin.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume VI, Issue 7

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom at the same place – though it will notch up quickly if there are any signs of the TradRight stiffening up.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly.  The advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Don’t Make Me Tap The Sign – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Some White Pills – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Don’t Make Me Tap The Sign

I saw a sign that said, “Caution:  Watch for Children” and wondered just how dangerous those kids were that they needed a sign to be put up.

“The Sign” is from /pol/.  It was a meme made up from a post in February of 2023.  It’s a cautionary meme about where we are as a society.

The United States military has long had a core of soldiers with a similar background – white guys from patriotic families.  I know several kids (who were friends of The Boy and Pugsley) that were going to join the military.  In the end, none of them did.

I can only guess as to why, but looking at the way that young white guys are vilified in society, are often not even dating, and, well, it’s likely that many of them don’t see something worth fighting for.  And without young (white) men to join the military we really don’t have a military.  Why would illegal aliens who came here for free stuff and not freedom want to fight?  They wouldn’t.  The GloboLeft aren’t fit to fight.

And it is also clear that the GloboLeftElite have tried to push The Narrative too far.  Observationally, one of the sharp dividing lines is how children are treated.  The trans imperative to convert children, making use of the Munchausen by Proxy Mommies is the only way that trans people can reproduce.

It’s clear that society is clearly not okay with what’s happening to our kids.  The GloboLeftElite have done everything they can to destroy the traditional values that created the economic wealth we have around us.  They’ve done everything they can to replace the population that built a country so that they can have cheaper workers.

But they pushed too far.  People like Bill Mahr are pushing back against trans-nonsense, and on places like Elon Musk’s X®, much more free speech (not actual free speech, but much more) is in evidence.  Even in places as lost as Great Britain, the sense of pushing too far, too fast is obvious, and they’re speaking about reducing illegals.  They won’t do anything about it, mind you, but they’re pretending.

In Romania, they have weird election rules where they vote for president, and then the top candidates run again.  The top vote getter in Romania, someone not on the Left, got the most votes.  The result?  The courts threw out the election.  This is not unusual – at ever time the populace didn’t vote “right” they are made to vote again and again until they give the answer the GloboLeftElite want.

If the author of the /pol/ post is right, the only reason the pressure is being released is that they want something from you.  Do not ask who the sign is tapped for.  It is tapped for thee.

Violence and Censorship Update

Trump derangement syndrome is real.  Just a few days after feminists pretended that they have men who want to have sex with them so that they’d have a sex strike, they started pretending they had men at home to poison.

They also decided, for some reason, to yell at babies:

The Babylon Bee® found out that Bluesky® can’t take a joke:

The idea of defunding NPR™ gained traction after Musk reminded everyone that Katherine Maher, head of NPR© said in her TED™ talk:  “I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done.”

It was proven that FEMA was told to not help people who supported Trump after the recent hurricanes:

Don’t make me tap the sign:

In the, “Let’s pretend this doesn’t lead to a Civil War” department:

I wonder if we invaded Canada if they wouldn’t welcome us as liberators?  Also:  this is why we need to keep the Second Amendment:

And, Joe has a goal for the next 50 or so days:

Biden/Harris Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Flat?  What’s going on here?

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time.  They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence is down slightly, and riots just didn’t happen.  Don’t make me tap the sign.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is up slightly.

Economic:

The economy took a huge jump.  Not sure this is real?

Illegal Aliens:

The latest numbers are simply lies, and I’m interested to see what happens in February.

Keep in mind, all immigrants are not the same:

But the goal is still to replace you:

Some White Pills

We are not even close to winning.  And we are not even close to the offramp from Civil War 2.0 (although Civil War 2.0 can be bypassed entirely by Global War 3.0) I know that I’ve smiled more than my fair share this month.

While Civil War 2.0 or Global War 3.0 is on the menu still, there is no reason that every issue of the Weather Report has to be gloomy.  We can take a few minutes to smile, while also realizing we need to not let up, and not stop until the rubble bounces.  Enjoy.

But I have to tap the sign:

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky.  Thanks so much, Ricky!!

BAD GUYS
https://x.com/i/status/1862664369470922782
https://x.com/i/status/1854660577727037819
https://mol.im/a/13975249
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/11/25/illegal_migrants_less_likely_to_commit_crime_guess_again_1074276.html
https://dnyuz.com/2024/11/03/america-has-a-shoplifting-epidemic-the-thieves-arent-who-you-think/

GOOD GUYS
https://x.com/i/status/1854289976264937740
https://x.com/i/status/1854581870199292335
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1856086465429594165
https://x.com/i/status/1854578088186986854
https://exitgroup.us/

ONE GUY
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-prosecutor-judge-make-mockery-justice-trial-subway-hero-daniel-penny

BODY COUNT
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/How-U.-Households-Have-Changed-1.jpg?itok=avf5e0ql
https://www.statista.com/chart/27458/lgbtqi–identification-united-states-by-generation-gcs/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14074021/Americas-STD-explosion-laid-bare-shocking-number-people-catching-one-minute.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/slideshows/10-states-with-the-highest-std-rates
https://x.com/fentasyl/status/1853839796441067520
https://x.com/TruthHammer4EVA/status/1854185151334691054/photo/1

VOTE COUNT
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1855650251077722130
https://x.com/ChrisLeeAlways/status/1854861324783960474/photo/1
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-5198616/2024-presidential-election-results-republican-shift
https://x.com/america/status/1854662087668048137/photo/1
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
https://x.com/whobedannyd/status/1854555635909537968

CIVIL WAR
https://www.escondidograpevine.com/2024/11/19/prospects-of-a-second-american-civil-war/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/11/11/among-the-civil-war-preppers
https://www.wired.com/story/oath-keeper-civil-war-election-day/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/dispatches/after-trumps-reelection-how-can-americans-rebuild-a-common-life
https://thefederalist.com/2024/11/07/after-trumps-victory-there-can-be-no-unity-without-a-reckoning/
https://www.latintimes.com/pro-trump-counties-vote-secede-illinois-form-new-red-state-565172
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-secessionists-declare-revolution-after-election-results-1982559
https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2024/11/23/the-dangerous-narrative-of-the-war-on-cartels/

It Came From . . . 1980

“The chain in those handcuffs is high-tensile steel. It’d take you ten minutes to hack through it with this. Now, if you’re lucky, you could hack through your ankle in five minutes. Go.” – Mad Max

Whole lotta 1980 in that picture.

There is, after this, just one more year to go through in the 1980s, and that’s 1981.  I’ve got to say, when I thought back to 1980, I was thinking that I was going to see a lot of garbage.  There is a lot of garbage, so I was right.  But I was also very pleasantly surprised – there were a lot of great movies that were hiding in 1980, some of which I utterly forgot about.

1980 was one of the first years where video was a big deal (from my recollection).  When VCRs became available, they were stunningly expensive, so the first VCR outside of school that we used was a rental – it actually came in a fluffy soft case and you had to hook it up to your TV.  I missed many of these at the box office, and although they had a *very* liberal interpretation of who could get in to see an R rated movie (the definition was:  did you have money, if you did, you were old enough to get in) I didn’t have a car or a way to get to the theater.  Consequently, I saw the rest either on HBO® or on a VHS tape, mostly rented.

Once again, no sequels are on the list.  To be fair, in 1980, most movies weren’t sequels – most were original creations.  Looking at this list, I see that as a huge loss of cultural wealth and our Current Year as one of uncreative stagnation, mainly mining the past for ideas.  Obviously, that will change.

Regardless, here’s the list:

Mad Max – I was one of the few in school that had seen Mad Max (HBO® again) before I saw The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2 for you Aussies).  There was something very unique about the visual style and the practical effects that I enjoyed.  The time where Max tosses the hacksaw to the handcuffed villain is classic – something Dirty Harry would have done.  This movie gave us St. Mel, so, for that, I’m forever grateful.

A.I. can’t spell, apparently.

Saturn 3 – I’ll be honest, I stayed up late to watch this movie on HBO® primarily because I heard that Farrah Fawcett was nekkid in it.  She was, but on a tiny television screen without zoom, well, she might as well have not been.  I later found out that she was nekkid because Kirk Douglas demanded a love scene with her, take from that what you will.  The movie itself is middling at best:  a retelling of Frankenstein in space, and they spent most of the budget on the robot/monster.  I heard that Harvey Keitel, who plays Dr. Frankenstein, did it all in a weird New York accent, so all of his lines are dubbed by another actor.  Like I said, a nightmare.  Oh, and, um, it looks way better on a big screen.

Breaker Morant – Ok, I didn’t stay up late at night to watch this movie because it was on in the middle of the day on HBO®.  I started watching it while I was building a model tank, and got hooked.  I had no idea that there was such a thing as a “Boer War” and watching this film didn’t add much to my knowledge, but it was fascinating and well done.  Of the first three films, two were Australian.  Good on ya, mates!

Where the Buffalo Roam – This has Bill Murray playing Hunter S. Thompson.  One memorable scene has Murray having miniature-sized hotel staff play football in his room during the Super Bowl®.  Bill and Hunter apparently became friends on the set, to the point that they got so drunk that Hunter tied Bill to a chair so he could do a Houdini-level escape and threw him into a pool.  Thompson then had to save Murray, who apparently didn’t Houdini that well.

Friday the 13th – The original.  A very disappointing movie to me that I saw after I’d seen Friday the 13th 3-D at the drive in, but without 3-D.  Where did Jason® go?  It was just a deranged mother?  Then were did the monster come from?  Bonus points for dead Kevin Bacon.

Chee-chee-chee . . . aww, it’s a kitten!

Fame – Ugh.  Artsy movie about teen angst and trying to convince stodgy old people to get with the program.  It’s really a generic movie, but I was dragged to it by an older sibling, and this movie alone convinced me that STEM was a much better way to not end up waiting tables.

The Long Riders – Okay, I was dragged to see this one by Ma and Pa Wilder, especially Ma.  I’m not sure why, but she kept muttering, “There’s gotta be some clue as to where Jesse hid that gold,” and then something about a family legend.  Dunno.  Regardless, the people who were actual brothers in the James-Younger Gang were played by brothers in the movie.  Couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a Carradine, a Keach, a Quaid, or a Guest.

The Shining – To this one, I dragged Ma and Pa Wilder.  One of my teachers(!) had lent me The Shining novel, and, being very, very innocent, I skipped over or didn’t understand the disturbing sexual bits.  Ma was a bit horrified.  As we had to drive 3 hours from Wilder Mountain to see this one, well, it was a very long, very silent ride home.

A hard day’s work and a hot tub at the end of the day makes for Jack’s boring movie.
A hard day’s work and a hot tub at the end of the day makes for Jack’s boring movie.
A hard day’s work and a hot tub at the end of the day makes for Jack’s boring movie.

Urban Cowboy – I have no recollection of how I got into the theater to see this movie, but I recall seeing Debra Winger on a mechanical bull that wasn’t even remotely trying to buck her off.  My take while watching this was, “Huh, this must be how stupid people live and fall in love,” because everyone in the movie except Madolyn Smith was stupid.  Stupid.  I watched it again when we moved to Houston, and didn’t change my opinion.  Stupid.  But, a nice soundtrack.

The Blues Brothers – Many hold this to be a classic.  It is, but I think the best joke is that Ackroyd and Belushi ended up making one of the most expensive movies (at the time) ever.  Why?  Because Belushi was “cool” and was the flavor of the moment, which was also cocaine.  Had John not died so tragically (injected by the woman who was the subject of Gordon Lightfoot’s song Sundown: some people are just trouble) I think it would have been largely forgotten.  Instead, it’s almost a shrine to what could have been.  The movie is really about six Saturday Night Live skits strung together with a very thin plot and a lot of music.  And, yeah, I’ve seen it a dozen times.

Airplane! – The tragic and heroic true-life story of Trans American Airline flight 209’s nearly fatal crash over Macho Grande, saved by passenger/pilot Ted Striker.  And, no, I don’t think I’ll ever get over Macho Grande.

Just not enough sombreros in this poster.

Used Cars – I saw this one on HBO® late one night.  And it was glorious.  It’s a comedy from the guy who brought you Dirty Harry, Red Dawn, and Conan the Barbarian, and it stars Kurt Russell.  That’s it.  Why haven’t you seen it?  Hal knows what I’m talking about.

Caddyshack – My big brother, John Wilder, took me to see this one.  It was awesome, funny, and he made me promise to not tell Ma Wilder that we’d been to see it.  I immediately went to K-Mart® and bought the soundtrack.  On an album.  Unlike The Blues Brothers, the manic energy (also fueled by cocaine) on this film set really worked.  One of the best comedies of all time.

The Final Countdown – It’s not a horribly good science fiction movie, but it does answer the question of every kid (like me) who grew up in Reagan’s America:  what would happen if we took a modern aircraft carrier to the Battle of Pearl Harbor?  No, wait, it doesn’t answer that question AT ALL.  Grrrr.

The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu – Rock a Fu.  It’s Fu music.  It’s not good, but it is Peter Sellers.

Flash Gordon – This movie is fantastic.  The science is awful.  The acting is uneven – some great, some not so great.  But it’s a hero, being a hero.  There isn’t any politics (though now Flash is considered a “racist movie” because Ming is supposedly a Chinese alien?) and there is a feeling of optimism throughout the movie, along with a soundtrack by Queen®.

I asked A.I. to draw “piles of white powder” but that was a violation.  But when I asked for a pile of flour?  Sure! 

Also made the cut, but the post is already too long, so I’ll be brief:

The Octagon – Why does the UFC® use and octagon?  Chuck Norris in this movie.

Super Fuzz – If you like stupid Italian westerns with Terence Hill (I do), this is your cop movie.

Somewhere in Time – Art Bell (and every girl in middle school) loved this time travel romance starring Christopher Reeve.

Altered States – Sitting in a warm, dark tub of water makes you a monkey.  I guess.

Chuck’s hair, feathered like the wings of a majestic bird.

There it is, an embarrassment o f riches, and there are even more from this year I didn’t mention.  Hollywood should be ashamed.

New Podcast! Our Bacardi Version – Number 151!

Streams will show up at 9EST (click the link below), that’s in just under 30 minutes!  (and we typically pregame for five minutes, so it really starts up at 8:55PM)

Mrs The Mrs – YouTube

Funniest News On the ‘Net.

In this episode:

  • War and Stuff
  • On This Day
  • Jackass of the Week
  • Conversation Street
  • Two Minutes of Guns in One Minute
  • ThinkRealFast
  • I Heard It On The X